


After

by beckzorz (heckofabecca)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Second Person, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 08:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heckofabecca/pseuds/beckzorz
Summary: The impact never comes.





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a writing challenge on Tumblr using the prompt, “I hate the truth. I just want to lie for a little bit longer.” I hope you enjoy!

Trash litters the empty road.

You stumble, the air suddenly cool on your tear-streaked face.

The impact never comes. 

Your knees hit the pavement, the shock shuddering through you as you gasp. The car… Where is the car? The car, it was right there, right about to hit—

Your hands shake as you swipe at your eyes, every breath cutting through your constricting lungs as you stare at the empty road. Half the trees are green, half in the thick of autumn. Red, orange, gold. Nearly every yard is overgrown; stiff grass pokes out of cracks in the sidewalk. Sounds filter in slowly. Wind in the trees, the skitter of dry leaves across the pavement, some screams, some cries, some laughter half-mad, as crazed as you feel. You press your hand to the road, push yourself up, turn in place.

Rusted cars in driveways.

_ Your _ car, rusted in your driveway next to one dusty with use. The keys in your pocket poke you. You tug them out. They rattle in your trembling hands.

Good as new.

A siren wails in the distance. A shadow in the sky, to the bright north. North? North is the facility. The compound. The neighbor no one likes to think about.

Another shudder hits you, but this one isn’t your own weak shock. This is from below.

More screams, people running, and then a face you know stops stock-still in front of you.

“Oh my god,” your husband breathes. “You’re back.” He reaches out, the bags under his teary eyes nothing to the gray in his hair, the lines on his face, the bare ring finger…

You step back. Look at your own hands. They’re the same, exactly the same, ring and all. Straight down to the pale lines peeking out around your wrists, under your sleeves.

“I—”

“You’re _ back_,” he says, and then he’s holding you, and you shudder again.

* * *

Five years.

Five years and a moment at the same time.

A moment ago, you were ready to die. You were _ eager _ to die. And your husband… He’s still alive. Older. Less hearty. But still alive, and uncorrupted by that urge to be no more.

Unaware of what you’d just been about to do.

Of what you’d been about to do… five years ago. It’s more than you can wrap your head around, even more than your husband’s continued ignorance of how trapped you feel by life—even more so now, when you know you’d been dead. Been gone.

The couch is more worn than it was, and you sink deeper than usual into the cushion at your regular spot. Everywhere you look, the changes make your head spin. That photo of your nephew is new—my god, he’s so much _ bigger_—the end table has a different finish, the wedding photos have been taken away.

Just like his ring.

But your husband fishes out his wedding ring, puts the photos back on the mantelpiece. He bares his soul of all the painful attempts at connecting with someone else, when always your ghost haunted him. You let him talk, but his words wash over you.

How does the saying go? _ Til death do us part? _

Death parted you, and death still clings to you with hungry fingers.

He thinks he lost you when you vanished, but you’d been a goner a long time before that.

* * *

You press your hands to your face after he kisses you goodnight.

“Soon,” you whisper. “_Soon._”

Two days in, when the news of the Avengers and the deaths and the invasion have all come rolling in, you leave.

* * *

The chill in your bones is more than the weather. The world’s a bleaker place now, even with all the celebrating. Some don’t seem to see it. But the trash on the ground, all the debris… You still don’t know what happened to the car you wished had hit you. Had the driver disappeared too? Or had they missed you by a moment?

God, if only they’d been driving faster.

None of it feels real. The world you know—no, _ knew _—is gone. There’s nothing left of it but overgrown memories. That tree at the end of the street—it’s too big, the trunk patchy with strange moss. The park is clogged with too many dead leaves, piled around the fence, the streetlights.

The strangest thing is that some of the potholes you’ve been complaining about for years have been filled. All the decay around you, half of everyone haggard and the other half in shock—and yet filled potholes.

It’s surreal. So surreal that if you stare at the ground, it feels like you’re in another world.

Like all the heavy truths hanging over you, gripping every bone in your body, aren’t there.

Every platitude is a lie, of course. But you cling to them because where you’re going, the truth will out. And there will be no escaping it.

* * *

You make your way upstate, to the ruins of a battleground with not a body left insight. The landscape is scarred, more so than yourself, but there’s no blood. The Avengers compound is all but debris.

There are people among the rubble. People like you, stunned or scavenging or mourning.

You’re… you don’t know what you are.

Stunned, maybe. Scavenging, no. Mourning? Not for the Avengers. Not…

Not after what they did.

Ah.

That explains the chill. You’re _ angry_.

You can feel it now. The twisting in your gut, masked by hunger. The coil in your chest, masked by that grip of death around your heart. The clenching of your jaw, masked by the cold.

Still, a wave of relief washes over you. It’s been months—for you, anyway—since you’ve felt something this strong.

A chirp overhead grabs your attention. You stare—a little drone, gray with red-tipped wings, a few feet over your head.

“This area has been classified as dangerous,” the drone chirps. “Please vacate the area, or you will be escorted out.”

It hovers for a moment, waiting. You don’t move.

“This area has been classified as dangerous. Please vacate the area, or you will be escorted out.”

You sit cross-legged in the loose dirt.

“This is your final warning. This area has been classified as dangerous. Please vacate the area, or you will be escorted out.”

The dirt is cool against your hands. Your only movement is to close your eyes and dig your fingers into the earth, feel it dead and crumbling under your fingernails.

If someone were to touch you, would you crumble? Would you feel dead to them too?

A pop overhead has you staring into the sky. The little drone—it’s almost like a bird, isn’t it?—has shot a flare into the air, its smoky trail in a bright upwards arc that ends a dozen feet over your head. Then the drone moves on, winding its way over the tattered topography, looking for someone else.

You look back down. The dirt shifts as you wiggle your fingers, though by now the chill has settled so you can barely feel your fingers. A few inches away, a flash makes you blink. You draw your hands from the earth and reach out, curious.

It’s… a little metal shard. Half red and half white, paper-light yet sharp as knives. You turn your hand's palm up and contemplate your covered wrists. Your pea coat is stiff, but you could bare enough skin. You could—

“Hey!”

You flinch, eyes wide and heart racing. The little shard fits neatly into your fisted hand, the edge biting into your palm. It’s enough to make you feel it, and some of the lingering tension melts out of you. The nick is painful, but it’s eminently satisfying. Like scratching an itch, or picking a scab…

A man is jogging towards you. Not a man you recognize. It’s not Captain America, not the Falcon. You stare blankly up at him as he stops a few feet away, not even breathing heavily after a run—who knows how long he’d been running. The ruined complex must still be a mile away. All the same, he looks thoroughly unbothered by his jog.

And thoroughly annoyed at you.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

A hollow laugh bubbles out of you. The man stares at you, his face pinched in confusion as your laugh devolves and tears leak from your eyes.

“Uh,” he says.

He tugs a handkerchief—a handkerchief?—out of his pocket and holds it out. You take it and wipe your cheeks with shivering fingers before thrusting the damp cloth back towards him. He takes it slowly.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he repeats.

“No,” you tell him. “I shouldn’t.”

* * *

His name is Bucky, and he shouldn’t be here either.

“I should’ve died in ‘43,” he says.

He’s not bitter. Not like you. Just matter-of-fact, like he’s used to it. Well, ‘43 was a long time ago. Seventy-five—no, _ eighty _ years now. He’s walking you back towards the road, keeping a distance from other departing pilgrims and scavengers. You keep your hands in your pockets, the shard in your fist still digging into your skin.

“But I didn’t,” he continues. “Every time I thought I’d die… I didn’t. The ice, the Potomac, the fading away.” He exhales in a little huff. “By now I’m almost used to it, I guess.”

Your throat tightens. “But we’re not _ meant _ to live forever.”

“Eighty years isn’t not forever. It’s just a helluva long time.”

“How can you be so _ calm _ about it?” Your fists tremble in your pockets. He’s just walking, eyes ahead, his face so damn serene you can’t stand it. “People have been screwing you over for eighty years, and you aren’t even bothered!”

Bucky snorts. “Like I said. I’m used to it. After all the shit I’ve dealt with, one more thing ain’t gonna kill me.”

“But it _ did _ kill you!” you exclaim, stopping in your tracks. “It killed you, it killed all of us! I was dead! What right did they have to stop me being _ dead?_”

He pauses a few steps in front of you. A few seconds pass as your last words fade, seeping into the ground crumbling around you, beneath you. Only when you can feel the heavy silence weighing on your shoulders does Bucky turn, but he doesn’t look straight at you.

“Death is never something to look forward to,” he says flatly. He sighs, then pauses. He glances sideways at you, his blue eyes piercing as his nostrils flare. “You’re bleeding.”

You stiffen.

“Where?”

Heat washes over your face. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Your fist curls tighter, driving the shard a little deeper. You hiss at the fresh jolt of pain.

Bucky grabs your elbow before you have the wherewithal to step back. He yanks your hands out of your pockets.

“Ow!” Your eyes sting with fresh tears as you tug against his hold. But Bucky doesn’t stop—he pulls open the wrong fist, and then the other, and the second he sees the blood on your palm he swears.

Then he spots the shard embedded in your palm, and he freezes.

It’s your turn to stare. There’s something awful in his face, a kind of primal grief, the kind you know all too well. His face is white as bone, eyes so wide open that the whole shape of his face has changed.

You can’t look at him anymore. Your gaze lands on your throbbing palm, on the shard of red and white, and it clicks. Bucky Barnes, red and white.

And blue.

For a moment, one shining moment, you’re back in 2008. The wonder, the shock, the joy—the return of Captain America, lost in the ice, back to fight against tyranny and evil before everything went wrong. For the world, and for you.

“Is this… the shield?” you breathe.

Bucky starts. His expression goes blank. In a few seconds, he’s pulled the shard away and tied up your palm with his handkerchief, the white cotton blooming red with your blood.

“No,” he says shortly. He shoves the shard in his pocket and nudges you onward. “Just part of it.”

“But…” You trail off; your steps slow.

Bucky stops short with a huff. “Things are different now,” he snaps. Then he sighs and scrubs his hand over his eyes. His tone softens. “We all have to get used to it.”

You stare over his shoulder, dread, and deadness settling back in your stomach. “I don’t know if I can,” you whisper.

“Things change. That’s just the truth.”

Rage shoots through you, hot and sickly and blinding. You spin away, hands trembling. “I hate the truth,” you hiss.

“What?” Bucky’s incredulous. Shocked. He grabs your arm, turns you back to face him. You meet his eyes fearlessly, angrily, but there’s something you can’t name in his expression, in his mouth, in his eyes. The anger melts away, Bucky drops your arm, and you’re left feeling empty and bereft.

“I hate the truth,” you repeat, quietly this time. “I want… I want to lie for just a little longer.”

Bucky’s eyes flit across your face. You don’t know what he sees, but he doesn’t push you onward again like he’s done every time you’ve stopped before now. Instead, he gently takes your hands, careful with your injured palm.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is more gentle than ever before. “Whatever happened to you, wherever you’ve been, whatever you were… everything’s different now. You don’t have to be stuck in the past. Trust me, it sucks.”

Your lips twitch, and Bucky smiles. You can’t look away from him, not with his hands curled around yours and his eyes so kind and his smile so sweet.

“I know it’s… hard. Picking up the pieces, starting over. It sucks,” he says bluntly, but his soft smile doesn’t fade. “But it’s not impossible. And this time, none of us are alone.”

The empty spot in your chest warms a little, and as the warmth settles, you realize that the grip of death on your heart is fading away. Tears spring to your eyes, happy ones.

Bucky drops your hands only to pull you against his chest. You hadn’t really noticed before, but he’s large, and warm, and so solid with his arms around you that you let yourself relax into his hold.

“I got you,” Bucky murmurs. He squeezes your shoulders. “I got you.”

For the first time in years—for yourself, and for the world—you feel something like hope.


End file.
